1831.] Parliamentary Reform. 359 



Reform, the outcry was loud enough to disturb the kingdom, inflamed 

 as it was by statements, that no country was ever so ill governed, no 

 people ever so oppressed, denied the last melancholy privilege of com- 

 plaining though they were then, as they are now, allowed to make, 

 and were fearlessly making, complaints which amounted almost to 

 sedition/' 



He then adduced instances of this exaggerated outcry from the writings of 

 the great political leaders of the 1 past : " What was to be thought of this 

 passage from Burke, or what was there in it which did not characterize 

 the language of declaimers in the present day ?" "Nobody/' says Burke 

 in his famous pamphlet, On the Cause of the Present Discontents; 

 " nobody I believe, will consider it merely as the language of spleen, or 

 disappointment, if I say that there is something peculiarly alarming in 

 the present conjuncture. There is hardly a man, in or out of power, 

 who holds any other language. 



" That we know neither how to yield, nor how to enforce, that hardly 

 any thing above or below, abroad or at home, is sound and entire ; but 

 that disconnection and confusion, in offices, in parties, in families, in par- 

 liament, in the nation, prevail beyond the disorders of any former times, 

 those are facts universally admitted and lamented. 



" This state of things is the more extraordinary, because the great 

 parties which formerly divided the kingdom, are known to be in a man- 

 ner entirely dissolved. No great external calamity has visited the nation, 

 no pestilence, no famine. We do not labour at present under any scheme 

 of taxation, new or oppressive in the quality, or in the mode; nor are 

 we engaged in unsuccessful war in which our misfortune might easily 

 pervert our judgment; and our minds, sore from the loss of national glory, 

 might feel every blow of misfortune as a crime in government." 



" One should think/' says Sir Robert, " naturally enough on reading 

 such a passage from such a man, that the end of the world, at least of the 

 kingdom, had arrived. Yet by God's blessing, we survived the crisis, 

 and look back with surprise at the exaggeration which has so described 

 it." He pursued this reasoning into other examples, and among the 

 rest, alluded to the celebrated Yorkshire address at the close of the 

 American war ; the universal outcry at that period that England was 

 irreparably undone ; and even the advice of so grave and remarkable a 

 man as Sir William Jones, that " each man should keep a firelock in 

 the corner of his bed-room, and should learn to fire and charge with 

 bayonet firmly and regularly, against those who then resisted the cry 

 of Reform." 



On the introduction of the Reform Bill in 1782, the same declarations 

 were made of national ruin, if the measure were resisted ; the House 

 were reminded of the Briareus hands of the multitude, and told that they 

 had but an hour to deliberate before they surrendered. On this occasion 

 Home Tooke wrote thus to Dunning : 



" The people must be satisfied in their just expectations, and most 

 surely will be so. Ministers will surely grant with a good grace what 

 cannot be much longer withheld. They will at least catch the present 

 favourable opportunity. They will not wait to be received with scorn 

 and hootings for their offer to us of that, which we should now receive 

 with gratitude. I will venture to assert that they have no time to lose. 

 1782." This cry was resisted like the rest, was put down, and the 

 country contrived to live on, notwithstanding. But the most remarkable 



